


The Celestial Clock

by greerwatson



Category: The Dean's Watch - Elizabeth Goudge
Genre: Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:08:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21932758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greerwatson/pseuds/greerwatson
Summary: It was more than two years before Isaac gave the new clock to Mrs Ayscough.
Relationships: Job Mooring/Polly
Comments: 14
Kudos: 7
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Celestial Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mrsredboots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsredboots/gifts).



The years of apprenticeship number five, if one is to be a clockmaker. Nor, during that time, is it permitted to marry. For both Job and Polly this frustration was mitigated by the joy of their being able to meet in Angel Lane with a fair frequency, though restricted to the kitchen, and rarely alone. Emma, having found them once in each other’s arms, kept a strict eye on them. They did, however, also see each other Sundays at St Peter’s, where Job no longer need linger shyly at the back of the church. Now, he might sit up front in the same pew as his beloved, licenced by their engagement and chaperoned not only by Emma but the entire congregation. During the week Polly kept her ring safely tied on a string round her neck, lest it be damaged as she worked. On Sundays, though, she wore it proudly on her finger.

As the months of the year progressed and the new year passed to old, Isaac taught Job one by one the skills of clockmaking: from winding the mainspring to enamelling the dial, from casting the bell to gilding the hands. Glass-cutting he taught him, and painting; carving, polishing, and engraving; and, above all, cutting the gears. There being no better way to learn a craft than with hand and eye set to the commission of a task under the tutelage of a master, the curving window of the shop in Cockspur Street fairly bulged with new clocks; and, about the creation of each design, Job had much to suggest. The finances of the shop he also influenced for, although Isaac remained sorely inept in setting a price, his apprentice had learned the value of money at a harder school. Though the watches of the poor were still often mended for nothing, should those better off wish to acquire the loveliness of a Peabody clock for their mantel, then they found themselves reaching deeper into their pockets than they had heretofore been asked to do. With Job as his apprentice, Isaac found the business of the shop thrived.

The increase in income greatly pleased Emma. Still, she never truly forgave Job’s intrusion into their lives.

Isaac did not confide at home that he had decided to recreate the celestial clock. Though it had been promised to the Dean, his sister knew that Adam Ayscough had not yet paid for it. His widow therefore had no legal claim. Emma would expect Isaac therefore to place the clock, in its new-built glory, in pride of place in the shop window for all to admire and someone to purchase, and would say much if it were to be given away for nought but whim and sentiment. As well, Isaac was sensitive to the echoes of Emma’s guilt in the matter of the destruction of the first celestial clock. Not that she ever mentioned the matter. Nor, for that matter did he. However, there were silences between them that rang louder than the great bell in the Rollo Tower of the Cathedral. If he had his own intentions as to the future of the celestial clock, it were better, he felt intuitively, that she know as little as necessary in the matter. Instead, he recreated its inner clockworks in the dark secrecy of his room behind the shop in Cockspur Lane; and the work went slowly. After all, there were watches to mend, regular rounds on Saturday, and trinkets and jewellery to be fashioned for sale at the year’s times of festival. When all was said and done, there was a roof to keep over their head and food to be put on the table. It was therefore more than two years before Isaac Peabody finally completed the celestial clock and gave it to Mrs Ayscough.

She had, of course, long since moved out of the Deanery to the small house at the wrong end of Worship Street. Even as Garland had foreseen, the furniture that was her inheritance fit badly in the small rooms of her new house; nor did the house fit her dignity. Fortunately, much did not accompany her, being the property of the Cathedral and thus reserved for the use of whomever resided at the Deanery, whose hall thus continued to be graced by the Richard Vick grandfather with its gilt spandrels and Chippendale case. Isaac serviced it each Saturday, along with such clocks as were brought in by Adam Ayscough’s successor.

Of the clocks that were part of the Dean’s estate, his widow saw fit to dispose of the Louis Sixteenth, with its memories of her French marriage; but the Jeremiah Hartley, with its exquisite dial, stood upon the mantel in her new parlour. Its ebonized case in its dark simplicity well suited her mood. Isaac fitted it into his Saturday appointments, first stop after luncheon. There he also saw, with mingled sorrow and gladness, the fret of the celestial clock serving as paper-weight on Mrs Ayscough’s desk. Later as he toiled in his workroom creating its twin for the new celestial clock, the design of swans and arrow-head reeds was clear in his mind. Had he taken the one and set it beside the other, none could have told the difference. He did not need to. His eye was true.

The following spring, Miss Montague’s time on earth finally drew to a close, to the grief of all who knew her. Her funeral was well attended; and afterwards those who considered themselves to have an interest in her estate, principal among them being her nephews, returned to Fountains for the reading of her will. There they received a most unpleasant shock. That her annuity died with her was expected; that she left certain minor personal property to friends was no surprise; that she bestowed a small competence on her long-time maid Sarah was perhaps unreasonably generous, but not out of character. However, the gift of her house to the late Dean’s widow seemed to the nephews no less than an outrage. True, as they had long since told their aunt, none of them had an interest in the house itself, being comfortably situated elsewhere. Nevertheless, the building did comprise the most valuable part of her estate. Each and every one of them had looked forward to receiving his just and equal share in the proceeds of its sale. Over the next few months, therefore, they put forward their best efforts to breaking the terms of the will.

Mr Havelock, who had drawn it up, was the best solicitor in the city. In defending the terms of the will, he acted for Miss Montague, whom he had liked. He had always admired Mrs Ayscough, if only from afar. Furthermore, he considered her by way of being a legacy from the Dean, whom he had respected; in acting for her, he acted for him. His regard for all three put him in fine fettle. By late summer, he saw off the parcel of nephews with their proverbial tails between their legs. It was in the autumn, therefore, that Mrs Ayscough removed from the house at the wrong end of Worship Street. Garland overlooked the disposition of her furniture around the rooms at Fountains, and found the pieces fitted well.

Mrs Ayscough then began a habit of little teas, to which she invited most of her predecessor’s circle of acquaintance. Sadly, it must be admitted that Emma was never among their number. It never occurred to the late Dean’s relict that a clockwinder’s maiden sister might merit inclusion in the company at teatime. Emma waited; but no little note of invitation ever came again from Fountains, and she felt it keenly.

Isaac, of course, continued to visit Fountains regularly on Saturdays at a quarter-to-twelve, though the door was now opened by Garland and there was no pleasant chat and glass of wine with Miss Montague. However, as Sarah had evinced a wish to stay on, he was able still to tend to the Lyre clock. It stood on the mantel above the fireplace in the servants’ hall, a nightingale among sparrows, for it had been left to Sarah in her mistress’s will. Now and then, in honour of her husband’s late-blooming, yet intense, interest in horology, Mrs Ayscough condescended to come downstairs early. She remembered the odd little man she had encountered once in the hall; and she took pains to ask questions about the watches and clocks that had so fascinated her Adam.

“Would you care to see?” Isaac asked humbly.

“I should like that very much, Mr Peabody,” she said, to her own surprise as much as his.

On that first time, he showed her the delights of the Jeremiah Hartley, as he had once revealed them to the Dean. On a later occasion, as he always carried with him the watch that had been his legacy, he pulled out his jeweller’s eyepiece so that she might admire the figure of Christian on the watchcock.

“It was your late husband who told me who it must be,” he said apologetically, “though I did read _Pilgrim’s Progress_ in my youth.” It was the Dean, too, who had expounded to him the symbolism of the celestial clock; but this Isaac did not mention. The new clock was progressing, but slowly; and he did not wish to speak of it to anyone, even its prospective owner, until it was complete.

Emma knew nothing of her brother’s discourse with the Dean’s widow. Isaac did not tell her. He had felt the consequences of her jealousy once; and that had been more than enough. Her opinion of Mrs Ayscough would, he suspected, only alter for the better should she, once again, see the inside of Fountains; and that he doubted would happen in the lifetime of any of them.

Nevertheless, Emma aside, the late Dean’s relict was before long regarded by much of the populace as a gentlewoman of charity and kindness, grace and beauty. Even in her mature years, she retained her looks, as well as an elegance of dress that drew the approbation of the most critical, the more since, like the Queen, she never did put away her blacks. Indeed, in the end, to the minds of many, there came to be little distinction between Mrs Ayscough, Miss Montague, and the Duchess Blanche. All three were ladies of Fountains.

Isaac had always seen watch-mending and clock-tending as the greatest part of his trade. He was accustomed to make clocks only in his spare time; and, as it was upon these which he taught Job, his apprentice’s lessons took most of the extra hours of the day. So, all too often, with Job eager to learn and Isaac bound in loving duty to teach, the celestial clock had perforce to be set aside. Sometimes, though, when the boy was mending a watch or shaping a pinchbeck trinket, it was possible to squeeze the hours of the day a little harder.

On the new celestial clock, Isaac wished to do most of the work himself, as he had with its predecessor. He might permit Job to shape the case under his instruction, though even there his conscience smote him; but the inner workings, which are the secret heart of any timepiece, Isaac reserved unto himself alone. The clock must keep as perfect time as the heavens depicted on its ivory dial. There, Isaac painted the signs of the zodiac: the silver-scaled fish at twelve o’clock and the blue-cloaked Virgin at six; the vermilion crab and gilded lion; the archer, bow bent with a silver-tipped arrow; bull and ram and scales and watering pot; and the heavenly twins bowling a hoop as round as the dial itself. As before, the sun swam up through the central disc of blue to place itself behind the fish. This time, though, Isaac knew its import.

“The stars,” said Job suddenly one day. He had helped Isaac with the task before, in the first days of his apprenticeship, before the Dean had chosen the clock for his wife and Emma had broken it. Though the silver moon had been placed by Isaac in its proper place at three o’clock, it was Job who had dotted tiny stars across the sky.

“You may gild the stars,” said Isaac graciously, “as you did before.” They would be burnished to a fine gleam to catch the light.

But here Job demurred. He still lodged with Mr Augustus Penny, the Vicar of St Peter’s; and this, in his own way, also furthered his education, though in no formal fashion. Under the ministrations of Ruth Newman, Mr Penny’s vast study was no longer cobwebbed and the torn carpet had been mended. Illumined by the well-trimmed wick of a lamp, it became the boy’s schoolroom. He browsed freely through the books, taking them both from the old oak shelves and the dusty, crooked stacks on the floor. Most of Mr Penny’s library comprised books of theology, sermons, and religious commentaries; but there was also poetry, history, geography, mathematics, and natural philosophy. Job had moreover wiped the dust of years from the surface of a pair of globes, one of the heavens and one of the earth. It was the former that, with Mr Penny’s permission, he showed to Isaac as proof that stars were not scattered at random.

So, in the end, the clock was not recreated exactly; and Job had his own, if minor, role in its final design. The gilt stars were set upon the painted dial following the patterns by which the hand of Our Lord had laid the stars in the night sky. And thus the clock was finally perfect; and Isaac called humbly upon the new mistress of Fountains and bestowed upon her the Dean’s posthumous gift. It was well over two years before she finally received the celestial clock, but Mrs Ayscough always knew to whom she owed thanks.

In due course, Job completed his apprenticeship and began his two years as journeyman. He and Polly were wed at St Peter’s Church; and all their acquaintance came to the ceremony. However, to Isaac’s dismay, his sister could not abide the thought of a young couple living in connubial bliss in the attic room above her head. Thus ended for a time Polly’s domicile at number twelve. Instead, she shared Job’s room at the vicarage; and, each day, the new Mrs Mooring walked to Angel Lane to perform her duties as maid.

When, two years later, Job created his masterpiece and was admitted to the Clockmakers’ Company, Isaac took him as partner, rejoicing in the knowledge that the art of his craft would not die with him, but be continued and bettered by the man whom he had trained. Not many years later, Emma was laid to rest as she would have wished: in the churchyard of St Peter’s, where the Reverend Robert Peabody, her father, had once been rector. After that, the Moorings shared Isaac’s home. Polly kept the kitchen fire stoked high to warm his old bones; and the attic rang to the joyful voices of their children.

Isaac continued to attend to the clocks of Fountains at a quarter-to-twelve on Saturdays. Often, he and its mistress spoke of the Dean whom both had loved and admired; more than once, he described the day upon which her husband had chosen the celestial clock as her Christmas gift, recalling the words of their conversation in the shop. What passed between them was not precisely friendship, for the Dean’s relict was never one to forget the difference in their position; yet she had a deep regard for the little man who wound her clocks.

Mrs Ayscough never withered and faded in her beauty for, unlike Isaac, she did not reach the extremity of old age. When her will was read, among the lesser legacies was the return of the celestial clock to its maker. So, at the end of his life, Isaac saw his beloved masterpiece upon his own mantel. In the fullness of time, when he was himself laid to rest in St Peter’s churchyard beside his sister, he left the clock to Job, along with the house, the shop, and the tools of his trade.

Though Job’s skill might have drawn him to try his luck in London, he never left the city where he had found his calling. It was his clocks that went forth and earned him prosperity and renown.

* * *

**Postscript**

Some of the cities of England have prospered and grown; others remain in many ways as they have been for centuries. Though the old cobbled lanes are now paved for cars, the street pattern remains. Angel Lane is still narrow and crooked; it is still crossed by Worship Street with its grand houses; and the Close still runs inside the wall around the Cathedral. The Rollo Tower stands proud above the city; the Jaccomarchiadus spreads defiant wings; and the bells of the churches ring the hours of the day, none of them quite keeping the same time.

There are, of course, differences. The Havelocks’ house is now a small hotel; Appleby’s bookshop is a restaurant. The Grammar School is now a comprehensive; but the Swan and Duck is still there, and serves a decent pub lunch. As for Fountains, it is owned by the National Trust. It is open nine to five, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, entrance fee five pounds. You will see it restored to mid-nineteenth century style, albeit with none of the furnishings it had when either Miss Montague or Mrs Ayscough lived there. Visitors to the Ayscough Memorial Garden are advised to park in the new parking lot on the far side of the bridge, which is not the one from which men fished in Isaac’s day. You will not need to hold your nose against the stench from the river; nor, when you cross, will you slip in the slime on Swithins Lane. There is, however, a plaque: should you stop to read it, you will learn a little about the Dean after whom the Memorial Garden is named.

When Adam Mooring drove in from the suburb of Willowthorn with his wife and children, they had some concerns about the weather. The day was overcast, the forecast uncertain. If it had come to rain, they would have made their way to the old Market Place to unfurl their umbrellas and stand in the queues until they wound their way into the cover of the town hall. Instead, they turned as they came off the bridge and entered the gates to the Garden. They thought they had come early; but there were those who had come in yesterday and booked hotel space; and, of course, there were those who lived in the city.

Their first queue was at Reception; and there his wife, with her box of china carried by their teen-aged son, was given a ticket and peeled off to join the Ceramics queue in the hope of seeing Henry Sandon. Adam and his daughter, ticket in hand, went elsewhere. The wait was long. The sky, fortunately, cleared; the sun came out; and they passed the time chatting to the people next to them in line. Eventually, they arrived at the head of the queue, were greeted, and put their own box on the table.

“It’s a family heirloom,” said Adam, as he carefully removed the outer packing, and began to unpeel the bubble wrap. “It belonged to my great-great-grandfather, though he didn’t make it himself. He was Job Mooring.”

“ _The_ Job Mooring,” said Alistair Chandler, impressed. “Are you in the clock trade yourself by any chance?”

“Architect, actually,” said Adam. “But this was made by the man who trained Job Mooring. He’s not too well known nowadays.”

“Isaac Peabody.”

“That’s right.” Adam looked up with a smile. “Well, I guess _you’d_ know.”

“I’ve been privileged to see several Peabody clocks. Even handled a couple. There’s a Lyre clock in the Museum of Timekeeping.” Chandler gave a wry grimace. “But there’s one I’d give my eye teeth to get close to. It’s supposed to exist, mentioned in a couple of letters, vague description. But no one’s seen it for a hundred and fifty years, at least. His greatest masterpiece, they call it.”

Adam peeled off the last layer of wrap. “I do believe they’re right,” he said, and turned the clock so the dial faced the expert.

“The Celestial Clock!”


End file.
